Does this ever happen to you when you sleep?

Like I wake up suddenly in the middle of the night barely awake and still very sleep and like I can't move even if I try. I am paralyzed and also I can't breath. Like I try to take a breath of air but it don't work. So then I lay there feeling like this for a good while and then I feel like I am going to die from getting no oxygen.

I get that horrible feeling you get like say when you have been under water to long and your brain feels like it's gonna explode. Then right when I feel like my body is going to shut down I pass out and go back to sleep.

 

That's perfectly normal. It's called sleep paralysis. It's your brains survival mechanism to stop you from moving in your sleep and potentially experiencing any harm, like rolling off the bed or whatever. Sometimes it doesn't turn off when it's supposed to.

People who claim to be continuously abducted by aliens exhibit this when studied in their sleep. When they're in and out of sleep, stuck in what's called the twilight period, they most always show signs of sleep paralysis and because of it they think that something bad, out of their control must be happening to them, and/or that they're being restrained against their will somehow.

It happens to many people, most people just don't remember it in the morning. Don't worry about it.

 

This happened to me one time when I was a kid, like 8 or 10. Only one time, though. It was scary as hell and I'm glad it hasn't happened to me anymore. I think I heard voices during mine. it said "are you okay okay?".. then I think I woke up completely and went crying to mommy

 

this happened to me a handful of times
there are many theories as to what it is

 

this has happened to me a bunch of times. the craziest was the last time it happened, probably sometime 2 years ago, but i remember being in the state, and i actually looked around from was seemed to be a 3rd person point of view and saw my brother sitting in my computer chair on the computer playing a game, my bedroom door was open, and clothes were laying on the floor.

whenever it would happen i always would try to make it stop by being like "1..2..3...wake up" or whatever and try to force myself awake, and after i really woke up, my brother was sitting there like i saw him, my door was open and the clothes that i saw on the floor were sitting right there in front of my hamper


weird shit

 

Sleep paralysis/Night Terrors. They are tough and often accompany nightmarish dream or hypnagogic imagery. They ARE normal, though you may have something cooking in your mind/subconscious that needs to be dealt with. You ARE breathing. You just think you are not while you are still in the dream space. i know it's hard to believe but it is true.

 

No. I'm getting tummy aches lately though.

 

I know a couple of people with sleep apnea. They use a breather machine at night.

I'm sure this isn't what you're talking about. But just in case, here's a link about it:

http://helpguide.org/life/sleep_apnea.htm

 

Your body is in a natural paralysis during certain sleep cycles - especially when you are experiencing REM sleep. If you wake up in that time period, it can take a little while to shrug off.

It is normal.

 

Some of my sleep paralysis episodes involved mass hallucinations. That's another reason why they're the likely root of alien abduction claims, people are trippin balls thinking they're being probed. Last night I had a semi sleep paralysis OBE. I could breath, but I was aware of my body's numbness/paralysis. My whole body felt like the painful moments of a limb "falling alseep" except I felt as if I was floating just barely out of my skin and feeling an unexplainable tension. Sleep paralysis is intense.

 

I hate it when that happens. I usually 'wake up' in the dream and go to the bathroom or whatever and I notice that I can't turn on a light switch or turn the TV or something and realize that I am still dreaming and start to panic. I have to lay down and 'go back to sleep' then I wake up for real. Afterwards I always have to call someone or go sit by someone in the house for a little bit to make sure what is going on is real and not the dream.

 

I used to get episodes of sleep paralysis/night terrors a few times a month from the time I was a young kid until I was about 22. They never got any easier or less scary, although I had a small sense of what was going on when I finally learned about them and could tell myself "it'll be over soon." Mine would usually involve a type of OBE where I believed I was finally waking up, but watching myself from a different point of view. It felt very realistic, I could actually see my room/house around me except the air would feel very thick like I was trudging my way through it almost in slow motion (I could actually feel my body and muscles moving and using energy), then something would be not quite right.. like I would get up and start getting ready for school then go downstairs and the house would look very realistic except all the furniture would be missing. I would realize I was stuck in a dream, "wake up" in my bedroom and do it over and over again on loop until something finally woke me up.

I would try to scream for help or thrash my body around but I was completely paralyzed. I learned that if I could just roll my head a little bit it would usually help get me out of it but it was very hard to do. Interestingly, all episodes of sleep paralysis stopped completely once I started taking SSRIs, that was the ONLY positive side effect I experienced from them. I'm off the SSRIs now and sleep paralysis will happen once in a while if I fall asleep on my back, as long as I'm on my side or stomach it won't happen, which is strange but it leads me to believe it has something to do with my equilibrium perhaps...

 

yeah dudes that shit is freaky. used to happen to me too when i was a kid, it would feel like i was this tiny figure in a giant white room, unable to comprehend what was giong on and just feeling like this pressure against my voice, my body, my mind. intense shit.

hasnt happened for years n years tho, but shit man i did not realize it was totally normal. thats good to know.

 

I've only experienced this a few times, but check this out. It can be incredibly easy to induce lucid dreams when you experience sleep paralysis. I had it happen the other night when I woke from a dream, and I immediately got really excited to try and experience a wake-induced lucid dream, or going directly to the dream state from the waking state.

Relax and recognize that its a natural body function that happens every single night that you are sleeping even if you are not aware of it most of the time. Close your eyes and try to observe what you are seeing. It will start off as random lights and blobs and patterns, but relatively quickly objects and scenes should start to appear. The other night when this happened it was as if I was watching a preview for a movie or like a movie sped up. Keep your mind clear and simply observe, don't try to force images into your head as that might keep you too awake to enter the dream. Eventually things will start to get really clear and you may try and make a conscience effort to enter the dream. Some people try to feel themselves lifting up out of their sleeping body, which is clearly where some of these alien abduction stories come from.

In my dream the other night, I just sort of stepped into the movie reel and was there. It was my first lucid dream in quite a while and I was really excited so it unfortunately didn't last too long. I was standing on the porch of an old house and I immediately jumped off and flew into the air as high as I could. I woke up pretty quickly and felt like an idiot for wasting my moment of lucidity.

Consider yourself lucky. I wish I could find myself in sleep paralysis more often. It happens most often when you wake up in the middle of the night. Your body thinks that you are still in REM sleep so it protects itself from falling out of bed or something like that by immobilizing the body. If you are into dream exploration and you are able to focus and relax, sleep paralysis can be a very useful state to induce lucid dreams. And if you've never had a lucid dream before, they are the absolute coolest thing ever! Live out all your fantasies in a fully fleshed reality, or just live out situations to practice for real life. Sometimes I will simply practice pieces of music or visualizing things with my mind. Other times I will dive underwater and become a fish or fly to other galaxies. The only constraints in your dreams are what you believe you can do.